The M1 Theory by Brian Hesse (best novels to read for beginners .TXT) 📕

point four millimeters deep. He pre-marked the drill bit with red marker for the proper depth after making his calculations. Thomas was aware that once past the skin, periosteum, skull, and subarachnoid space, he needed to carefully back off the drill bit, so as not too damage the soft grey matter of the prefrontal cortex. He felt a temporary wave of nausea bite through his stomach as he listened to the sound of the sharp bit grind against the skull with the miniaturized friction of a car engine’s piston working without the lubrication of oil. After hitting the red mark on the drill bit, he flipped a small switch on the left side of the drill with his thumb, reversing the action of the drill, and carefully backed out. He turned off the drill and wiped growing beads of warm sweat forming on the edges of his brows, before inserting the fiber optic cable into the hole.

 Thomas watched the monitor with the wonder of a deep-sea diver exploring an unmapped section of the Oceans darkest trenches. With careful precision, he inserted the cable between the dark fissures of the prefrontal lobe. After several attempts, he noticed a distinct bell-shaped piece of grey matter just a few centimeters beneath the grey and red surface of the brain. He theorized that this area was the location of the neural M1 pathway. Gently pushing the thin cable to the left, he taped the cable in place on the surface of the skull. Thomas, grabbed the laparoscopic cable, with the receiver attached to the end. He breathed a sigh of relief noticing that there was just enough room to insert the receiver tube next to the fiber optic cable, now stationary and projecting a clear colored image on the monitor. After placing the receiver, Thomas removed the tubing and the cable, and applied antiseptic to the small wound. He placed a small drop of liquid skin to the outside of the hole, like a mason cementing a hole in a brick wall.

Thomas looked at peaceful sleeping form of his Father and stated, “Well Dad, I hope I cured you and brought you peace. Mother would have wanted this for you.”

All Work and No Play

  Michael’s Restaurant is always crowded on a Friday evening. Sitting directly in the middle of the University city, one of the five major financial centers of the nation, Michael Sarducci struck a gold mine opening an Italian restaurant in such a location. Sandra would normally never frequent such a busy establishment, preferring to avoid crowds. She was never comfortable with people, as she would be the first to tell anyone brave enough to get that close. She communicated much more comfortably with the dead, than the living.

 “The dead are much easier to understand,” she stated to Eric, sitting directly across from the small round tasteful decorated table.

 She watched for the normal reaction in Eric’s eyes, just before bolting for the nearest exit. Glairing into Eric’s eyes as if looking into a review mirror, her mind strayed to the past, on a night very similar to this one. She started that date, just like this, by talking about her job, the only thing that filled her time. She remembered, with a touch of amusement, how that date sat patiently listening to her go on about talking to the dead. She could see him begin nervously fidgeting in his seat, until at last looking at his texts,and putting on the worst fake expression of surprise she ever witnessed in her life. Before she knew it, he was racing to his car, no doubt relieved that he got out with his life, she thought, giving off a low chuckle.

 “What was so funny,” Eric asked, looking surprised at the strange interruption.

  Sandra shook her head, as if jarring her brain back to reality and asked, “Excuse me, what laugh?”

 “You were saying how you were more comfortable with dead people, compared to dealing with the living. Then you just stared at me, and gave off a little laugh.”

 Sarah felt just a tinge of embarrassment threaten to turn her face a slight shade of red. She did not even notice her wanderings anymore. Her entire life, she could remember being told about her spontaneous daydreaming.

  Oh, I’m sorry. I guess my mind sometimes wanders away from me. Listen if you’re not comfortable, let’s just call it a night. We could skip the pretense of the respectable dinner, and just go back to my place.”

  Eric smiled and stated, “I am fascinated by what you do. In addition, I want to go through the pretense of this respectable dinner. You look beautiful, and I want this night to last as long as possible before I take that dress off. Think of it like a few hours of foreplay before we go back to my place.”

 Sandra’s worst fear was confirmed at this very moment. She feared that one day her luck would run out. One day she would meet someone with an actual name. She feared that one day she would meet someone that made her forget about the dead, and gave her the hope that she could function normally among the living. She feared that one day someone would break through her defensive mechanisms that protected her from a world, she knew how to navigate but, could never fully understand. That someone, she now realized, was Eric.

You Can’t Make an Omelet

 Thomas waited anxiously for his Father’s return from the corner watering hole, Joe’s Tavern. His Father was no stranger to Joe’s. Thomas sat at his coffee stained kitchen table, waiting for his Father to stagger in the door. As any prey in nature relentlessly stalked by a predator, he learned through the painful slow birth of adaptation, how to avoid his Father’s violence. Knowing his Father never dared to navigate stairs when under the influence of another alcoholic binge, Thomas spent most of his childhood weekends and, adult life, within the dusty confines of the basement. But tonight was different. Swallowing his fear, as every scientific pioneer must master, Thomas prepared himself to introduce the necessary variable to conduct his first experiment. His Father was not as easily provoked to violence in his older age. Like any individual familiar with living with mental illness knows, symptoms of the disease lessen in time. For the manic depressive, the deep dark abyss of despair grows shallow with each passing decade, as the dark canyon is slowly filled with the familiarity of misery. Like every unlucky person knows suffering from the ravages of bipolar mood swings, the healing power of time makes suffering more manageable, if not more tolerable. So, Thomas prepared himself to provoke that part of his Father’s disturbing nature buried, but not yet dead. He sat holding the six-inch square black box in his hand, running his thumb back and forth across the single green deadened button on the front panel. He considered, with a growing sense of unease, the consequences of this very button never turning on with its brilliant bright green color. The transmitter was of short wave length, so he must get as close as possible to send the weak electrical current into his Father’s frontal lobe. Any malfunction of the transmitter or, receiver implanted in the slick grey matter of his Father’s brain, could mean a death sentence for Thomas, the much weaker of the two. Without time for another nervous thought, Thomas heard the front door open with a bang, and his Father’s unequal footsteps approach the kitchen.

  “What are you doing in here, you little shit. Shouldn’t you be hiding like your Mother in the Fucking basement?” His Father staggered to the refrigerator and grabbed a cold beer from the empty space within. Food was never a priority in the house. As Thomas remembered hearing his Father exclaim, on more than one occasion, “I can’t hold my beer in here, with all that food in my way!”

   Thomas remained silent, waiting for the right moment to present itself. Prior to his Father’s noisy arrival, he did his best to remove as many sharp instruments from the kitchen, without his Father becoming suspicious. As a genius, Thomas knew well that he inherited most of his intelligence through both maternal and, to his wonderment, paternal genes. His Father was observant, and surely able to notice when something is out of place with his usual surroundings.  

   His Father drunkenly plopped himself down on the chair directly across from Thomas. He looked at the transmitter in his hand and watched hopefully as the green button began to blink off and on, indicating that the signal was growing in strength as the distance between the two shortened.

   Still staring at his son, he exclaimed with a sly smile across his whiskered face, “Well you little shit!”

   “I’m just waiting for you Dad.”

   “Oh, really. Whatever for you little coward.”

   “Just to tell you, that you are a drunken piece of shit, and I know something kept hidden from you for years…you old useless rag.”

   Thomas watched with beads of sweat slowly breaking through the pours above his brow, as his Father’s eyes widened with rage. His hopes were dashed just as quickly as he watched his Father’s bloodshot eyes return to their normal half shut drunken position.

   “Your trying to provoke me boy. Well it aint working. I’m much too tired of beating your little ass into a pulp. Besides, it’s no fun anymore since your Mother can’t watch me do it.”

   “Well, I just wanted to let you know that Mom was able stay for a reason. She had two good things in her life that kept her steady after those terrible nights having to share a bed with a stinking drunk like you. She had me to care for, and she had our old neighbor, Mr. Taylor’s, fully functioning dick to keep her satisfied while you were at the tavern thinking you were in such control.”

   Thomas quickly dived to his right, avoiding the empty beer bottle that came sailing directly toward his head. Before he could turn over on his back and spring to his feet to create a safe distance, his Father was on his back, and pushing his full two hundred and fifty pounds on his own one-hundred-and-fifty-pound frame. Thomas felt pressure squeezing around his throat like a pair of vice grips clamped tightly around the head of a stubborn bolt. The atmosphere of the kitchen began to darken, and he could feel the pressure building behind his eyes, as if they would pop right out of their sockets, and go rolling across the dirt smeared linoleum floor. Just before giving in to the, what hopelessly seemed to him as, inevitable darkness, Thomas felt the sharp corner of the transmitter box stabbing into his sternum.

  “Now I’m going to kill you, like I should have done years ago when your whore Mommy died!” he exclaimed, as he squeezed tighter around Thomas’s neck.

  Thomas flattened his right palm and pushed with all the remaining strength he had until his hand touched the box. He snaked his finger across the surface, finding the green button.He pushed hard just before blacking out.

The First Meeting

  Sandra rolled back to her side of the bed with a deep sigh, knowing what the ringing of her cell phone meant at two thirty in the morning. She opened her eyes and looked at Eric snoring lightly into the darkness of her bedroom. She was not ready to go to another man’s apartment just yet. As a woman who loves the thrill of a good mystery, some prolonged guessing at what his apartment may look like was just a small, yet important, part of this game.

  “Go ahead, where is the body.”

 “Ninety-Four Cricket Circle,” came the squeaking voice over the other end of the phone. “All we know, is that a Thomas Lorey called stating that his Father was dead. The phone then went dead. We tried calling back